Well Jeff I think it wasn't his point. He obviously don't plan to stay as UNMO (undereducated medical officier) forever. There is also no need to play with big and low salaries, we all know that quality of job/person can't be measured by salary.

(BTW if your work is so big leasure, where is my favorite request. Java to 64 bit native compiler with ability to use Intel assembly syntax. ~_^)

Re blah^3

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Are you saying there are 25 months in the year? $10/hour is nothing.

Note the word "conversion (factor)". $ vs some other money. Actually it should be 23.7, but it made my point anyway.

If you believe $10 is really nothing, you might give me the difference if I'd get a less paid job.

I think in comparison to game developers salaries rest of industry is overpaid (relative decrease in salaries in one part of industry tends to influence other parts as well). In comparison to the rest of the world current US/UK salaries are too high, and because a program's quality isn't country dependent...

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Used mine on day one after graduating.

It might be interesting history, would you share?

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Great. How do you tell, out of interest?

Would you like a 6 pages article full of juicy and boring details, with ending words: it depends on your previous experience, and about detailed knowledge of various persons, and a bit of luck?

Of course there is a nice preliminary method. Choose topic force him to do demo, look curiously at it. Then if you'd hire him, you'd have to do testing him some more, there might be a time interval when it's easy to kick him out.

The real problems are person that could play on working when on probation, then when they started to be protected by law, theirs working activity could decrease by a factor of 3. Alas the choosen demo method doesn't work on them.

I think in comparison to game developers salaries rest of industry is overpaid (relative decrease in salaries in one part of industry tends to influence other parts as well). In comparison to the rest of the world current US/UK salaries are too high, and because a program's quality isn't country dependent...

Rubbish . Quality is highly dependent upon experience, training, and psychology. There is a huge cultural and literal difference in each of those things from country to country.

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Used mine on day one after graduating.

It might be interesting history, would you share?

For instance, FSM's and whether or not you can ever write an algorithm to match infinitely nested brackets (one of my co-grads had to explain this to his employer at the start).

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Great. How do you tell, out of interest?

Would you like a 6 pages article full of juicy and boring details, with ending words: it depends on your previous experience, and about detailed knowledge of various persons, and a bit of luck?

Yes - basically, you can't. It's wonderful to say you won't, but *nobody* does it intentionally, it's just extremely difficult (almost impossible) to avoid completely.

Not to disrupt the wave of agreement, but it is possible to work in programming in High School.

This might inspire you (or at least give you hope):

I started programming at age 11 and knew it was what I wanted to do. By 16 I was doing contracts for small companies. I self taught and studied anything I could get my hands on. While in my final year of high school I went to a programming company, with several programs I had written on disk, and asked to speak with the technical lead. Surprisingly I found myself in the CEO's office talking software engineering (very technical guy who was a PhD CS from Waterloo, Canada's best programming university).

He was impressed with my knowledge and I could see it. I boldly asked him if there was any way I could work for him. He said that it was obvious I knew alot, more then most of his other engineers. The project was being funded by the government through a research grant and all employees had to have a CS degree. He challenged me to learn C++ (I had only been doing C), and rewrite some code that took a BSC a year to complete...if I could do all of that in 1 month, he would go to bat with Ottawa (where the funding came from) on my behalf.

I took to the challenge and taught myself OOP principles and C++ in about a week, spent 3 weeks developing the software on my own time after school. On the last day of the month, I skipped school and went into the office and presented what I had done and explained the design. I was hired on the spot for $29K (pretty good at the time) starting in 2 weeks (1 week after graduation). By the time I was 19 I was the technical lead on the project and had 5 CS graduates reporting to me.

Now I am 34, Director of R&D for a $60 million dollar software company, I have 25 software engineers working for me and I make over $190K per year....still no degree, just my High School diploma.

It is doable, if you are creative, energetic and truly dedicated to programming.

I'm more of a casual programmer though; it's not my preferred career (just my second), so I don't know if I could pull something like that off, if only because I'm spending most of my time working in the direction I'd prefer to go (filmmaking). In other words, I'm not "truly dedicated to programming."

That's still very awesome. Which company do you work for?

BTW, to keep everyone update, the interview at the hospital went well, it looks like I'll get the job.

Along with that I'm doing some low paying contract out programming in my off school time.

It's time to prove to your friends that your worth a damn. Sometimes that means dying; sometimes that means killing a whole lotta people.

BTW my story is very much like Vorax's, except I spent 3 years whacked out of my head on weed and whisky somewhere in the middle and I think there was a degree involved in there somewhere Curiously enough my story has ended pretty similarly to his as well although I've got 2 years to catch up on him and only 5 minions so far

It is doable, if you are creative, energetic and truly dedicated to programming.

And exceedingly lucky.

Surely, software jobs requiring qualifications for people with no commercial experience has very little to do with whether the person can or can't do the job. Its to do with the company being at least partially assured that their staff will be able to turn out the quality products they require to get and keep customers. Hell, if it was just about being able to do the job every 16 year old computer geek coming out of school could take a job. I can't count the number of people that came out of the degree course I took, knowning nothing new*.

FOr what its woirth, i got my first big jum pwhen i mvoed from Silicon Valley to LA for a job (and that was only 1 year after that $30K salery so it ws the same time period.) They told me "you cant live on $30K, we're giving you $45K" and again this was 15 years ago, My wife (then my fiance) got a job for about $30K. Between the two of us making 75K we managed to afford one, only a few years used, car, a decent apartment in a decent area, my school loans (about $250 a month as I recall) and to put away enough to have a nice wedding on the cheap (she mad her own wedding dress for $500 of materaisl and a year of nights sewing. I rented prfessional sound equiptment and got my brother to spin CDs at the reception. etc)

That was about 15 years ago.

Ofcourse if your parents are gonna let you live at home and theya re gonan feed you then its a whole different story...

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Vorax story displays alot more than luck; it took balls to do that (ie 'personal courage' but its more fun to type 'balls' ).

Personally, I'd love to get some startup capital, hire about 100 Indian programmers and build a system to put my company out of business. The people I work for are stuck in the stone ages of computing (project management, documentation, productivity etc...). They are RIPE for the plucking. Umm and this is relevant because....

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so I don't know if I could pull something like that off, if only because I'm spending most of my time working in the direction I'd prefer to go (filmmaking). In other words, I'm not "truly dedicated to programming."

Vorax story displays alot more than luck; it took balls to do that (ie 'personal courage' but its more fun to type 'balls' ).

Personally, I'd love to get some startup capital, hire about 100 Indian programmers and build a system to put my company out of business. The people I work for are stuck in the stone ages of computing (project management, documentation, productivity etc...). They are RIPE for the plucking. Umm and this is relevant because....

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so I don't know if I could pull something like that off, if only because I'm spending most of my time working in the direction I'd prefer to go (filmmaking).

So I have a degree in both comp sci and film production .

Im production certainly IS someplae still where yo ucan "work your way up." Id try to land a productio nassistant position. Which basically means you'll do all the sh-t work and not get paid, but thats how yo ustart learning and makingf contacts traditionally in the industry.

Otherwise, you could go to school for a film degree. In general I think msot academic film dgrees are large part BS (and that includes mine) BUT you are lucky being right in the idnsutry there, you actually have good film schools (USC and UCLA). Hard to get into but if you really want to do it then work at it. generally the folks who succeed are just the folks who refuse to give up.

There aer also some good trade schoosl out there. I have a friend who is a course dirctor at Full Sail in Florida. Ive visted down tehre adn their facilities and prgoram blew me away. Its MUCH better then my 4 year school had.

Ofcourse also get sued to eating beans and ramen soup and living 4 guys to an apartment 'cause LA is full of people who want to mzake it in the film industry and smot fo them wait tables and drive cabs to survive...

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